Samsung's Catalyst Fund Is on the Hunt for the Next Big Thing
*By Conor White*
In the arms race between tech giants, there is no such thing as a vacation. For Samsung, it relies on its Catalyst Fund, led by Shankar Chandran, to find the next emerging market.
"A company of our scale, we really have to think about what are those trillion-dollar opportunities?" Chandran asked.
In an interview Friday on Cheddar, Chandran said the Catalyst Fund was on the "front lines", constantly searching for companies and ideas in which to invest.
"The investment team's job is to really be the eyes and ears for the company," he added.
Currently, those eyes are firmly fixed on data and artificial intelligence.
"Almost every single industry will get reinvented by data and A.I. over the next couple of decades," Chandran said.
For Chandran, the value gleaned from combining the two is almost immeasurable.
"Data is the new oil," he said.
Humanity was aware of oil for thousands of years, but it wasn't until the internal combustion engine was created that demand went through the roof, and prices skyrocketed, he added.
"A.I. is the internal combustion engine that changed everything."
For full interview [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/samsung-catalyst-fund-head-talks-evolution-of-vc).
A hovercraft traveling from Cape Cod to Nova Scotia became a beachside attraction when it was deliberately run aground after suffering a 3-foot tear in its skirt.
Artificial intelligence is revolutionizing how people work, including in creative industries. The famous Tribeca Film Festival featured some projects recently that used A.I. that some filmmakers say make it more creative. Cheddar News took a peek at some of those films.
The Department of Energy and several other federal agencies were compromised in a Russian cyber-extortion gang's global hack of a file-transfer program popular with corporations and governments, but the impact was not expected to be great, Homeland Security officials said Thursday.
Rivian is expanding into New York City and launching its first showroom there. Cheddar News took a look at the showroom in NYC that the company is calling "spaces," which is intended to be experiential retail locations to woo new customers.